‘Whatever people’s opinion of David Popper’, declared Pablo Casals, ‘I will play his music as long as I play the cello, for no other composer wrote better for the instrument.’ Popper was born in Prague in 1843 and, as a child, learnt to play the piano and violin. However, when he went to study at the Prague Conservatory at the age of twelve, he was persuaded to take up the cello instead as there was a shortage of cellists in the city at that time. Popper became an internationally renowned virtuoso, and also composed many pieces for his instrument. One of the most popular, the Mazurka in G minor Op 11 No 3, he dedicated to Bernhard Cossmann who, like Leo Schulz, had been leader of the cello section of the Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra. In 1912 Popper heard Casals play this Mazurka as an encore at a concert which had also included his effervescent
Chanson villageoise.
from notes by Peter Avis © 2011
